Saturday, June 29, 2013

Don't Ever Mistake My Kiss For A Handshake

It's been said that Urge Overkill made some shitty records by the time they were done, which is probably true. It's been said that they were pretty big jerks at one point, and maybe that's true also. I don't know any of the details on all of this, I'm just a guy who bought some records once. The little I do know about Urge Overkill is that I really liked their first record ("Strange, I..." -- I had two copies, somehow) and their "Lineman" single (a smashing cover of Jimmy Webb's "Wichita Lineman"), which places us at around 1987 or so. All pretty basic stuff that didn't stray too far, soundwise, from the Big Black/Killdozer axis that was prevalent in indie rock at the time, but I dug it a lot. There was actually a bit of a gap between the "Lineman" single and the first Urge Overkill LP, and it was during that in-between time that I got a chance to see them at the Anthrax in '87. I don't think I was all that impressed (about all I remember is that they wore matching smoking jackets), and that made me sort of file Urge Overkill in the back of my head somewhat, like, okay those guys were sorta good, but I don't really know what's up with them, and what the fuck's with those jackets anyway? Let me put this new Naked Raygun record on instead. Whoops, that sucks. Man, this scene's going to hell right now, isn't it?

It was maybe a year or two later that "Jesus Urge Superstar" came out, which I reluctantly bought a used copy of (the kind with the corner cut off, like Fran Fried used to own it or something), not expecting all that much. I put the platter on, and all of a sudden it was like, KA-POW! Huge rock riffs all over the place, the kind that get played on the radio (when you're lucky), and not cheesy like one of those Decry or DYS records -- this shit still sounded like an indie rock record, and made all the right references too (is that a fake Byron Coley essay on the back cover? beats the fuck outta me). Okay, so maybe the mastering is a little spotty, but songs like "Polaroid Doll" and "Dump Dump Dump" sorta beg to be played way freaking loud, especially if you've got a good clean copy, which mine isn't by the way, it's a secondary copy that I fished out of another used bin somewhere (man, there's like a million copies of "Dickcheese" floating around, good thing Dave Burokas had a coke habit). I could mention where they copped "Foxy Lady" and Eddie Money's "Shakin'", too, if you want, though that's not gonna make anyone more interested in listening to this record. The "Now That's The Barclords" single that came after this was pretty good also, and then I stopped paying attention after that, although there were a couple of CT bands that ended up sounding a good deal like this record-- namely Atlas and (especially) Creature Did-- although it's probably not like they really meant it or anything.

Some sort of announcement for 2016 or something

What about me

For the record, I have not only lost my ability to take a joke, but I can also no longer sense danger, communicate with sea animals, see through walls, transform myself into a bucket of water or block of ice, burn a batter's bat to ashes with my fastball, fly an invisible plane, nor start fires and cause seismic waves using only mind control.

Ad policy

The labels that have enough money to buy advertising all put out shitty records

Review policy

If you sent me something I must've lost it

How to use this blog

You can browse this blog and listen to the songs without having to download them first, by clicking on the highlighted song titles. The files will open in a new window; you can either hit "Play", or you can click on "Download" up in the right-hand corner to download them to your computer, which is the preferred method, because there's usually a cool graphic (or sometimes even lyrics) when you play the files using Windows Media Player.

Also, clicking on the photos will enlarged them. I guess some people haven't figured that out yet.

Archive

Bad Writing

"Within a grainy film-still between a summer sunset and the end of times lies the post-punk squall of Weekend. Weekend filter the aggression, tempo and sneer of punk through a wall of reverb, haunting melody, feedback and primitive garage guitar.... a totally distinctive take on the history of post-punk noise rock."

Recent awesome-like stuff from those other blogs

fucking nothing, can you believe that. blogs are dead

This blog was originally intended to be a place for me to write about the records in my collection, regardless of their rarity/collectability-- or, at least, it was when I first started. Lately it's just been an excuse for me to make dumb jokes and spout off about a lot of stupid crap. Sometimes different things will be thrown in along the way just to confuse people and piss them off, which is okay. All screw-ups, wrong dates, and mis-statements will be ignored by me as if they were intentional, except for grammatical errors which will be edited and rewritten at least five or six times if necessary. Facts will often be misrepresented, as a way of mocking those people who think such things are important. Please note: This is just a hobby for me, and bands are written about here either because I own one of their records or because I've seen them play before and like them. Posting press releases for crappy bands that I have no use for is not really how I want to spend my spare time. If you want to know what kind of bands I like, just look at the sidebar to see which bands I've written about already, and you'll notice that your PR firm doesn't represent any of them. Most of the live band photos on this blog are mine, and if there's one of your band that you like then please feel free to use it, I don't care. It's your band anyway. The blog title itself was swiped from Paul Caporino-- "One Base on an Overthrow" was originally going to be the title of a M.O.T.O. record that I was going to release back in the '90s, but that never actually happened. Lucky for you, I guess.